Eternal Father, your Son has promised that you would grant all the graces we ask of you in his name. Trusting in this promise, and in the name of and through the merits of Jesus Christ, I ask of you five special graces: More »

When the doorbell of St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit rang, it sounded sharp and clear, like the clanging of a school bell. And if it rang in the wee hours of the morning, it nearly always startled the thirty or so residents out of their sleep. More »

I have been a mother for about thirty-five years. With the birth of my first child, my maternal instincts began to surface. More »

Most of us have a hard time understanding what real hunger feels like. When we say that we are hungry, it usually means that we have gone a few hours without food, not that we are in the desperate situation that afflicts so many others. More »

Mary is identified in relation to her native village, Magdala, located near the Sea of Galilee, rather than in relation to a man such as her father, husband, or son, as is the case with many women who appear in the gospels and was the custom of the times. This way of identifying her suggests that she was a single woman following Jesus out of her own conviction. More »

When my wife and I began taking groups of pilgrims overseas about ten years ago, we prepared for each trip by making an exhaustive search of every local site that might be of interest to Catholics. It was fun to discover a shrine, church, monument, or memorial that we could work into each group’s travel itinerary. More »

On our bedroom wall hang the words of the marriage covenant my wife and I made with each other more than thirty years ago: More »

If you’ve ever been tempted to think that you’re not cut out for sanctity, consider the case of Camillus of Lellis. Here is a saint—the patron of hospitals, health care workers, and the sick— whose burning love for God effected a widespread reform of patient care. More »